GB Feature: Stormfront Studios Interview

We’ve conducted an interview with Stormfront Studios’ Don Daglow, in which the company President and CEO gives us a history lesson about their involvement with many Dungeons & Dragons games over the course of almost two decades, including the rise and fall of the original Neverwinter Nights on America Online. Here’s a snip:

GB: Any idea why AOL took Neverwinter Nights offline in 1997, even though it was still very popular? Was there ever any talk of revitalizing the game, and would Stormfront have been interested in pursuing a sequel of some sort if the opportunity would have presented itself?

Don: When AOL’s business started to explode with the public acceptance of the email system in the early 1990’s, we were anxious to expand and enhance Neverwinter Nights, since it was by far their biggest hit game. They kept saying, (Sorry, we have our hands full with all the fires burning here.) Every day there were newscasters on TV asking, (Can AOL install enough modems to keep up with the growth or will they crash and burn in a sea of busy signals?) The 50-person AOL operation I had started working with in 1987 had grown to thousands of people and millions of subscribers.

I talked with Steve Case about it and he said, (I know we’re throwing away millions by not building on Neverwinter Nights. My problem is that I’ve got everyone focused on not losing billions of dollars, so good projects with multi-million dollar profiles are just not getting done.) It was hard to argue with his logic.

Even without enhancements, the game lasted six years, and it still earned millions for AOL its final year. But their systems were changing, the software was old, and the end came. Stormfront had become a console game development studio by that time, and we were no longer focused heavily on the online business.